Frank Walker

And so the first constituent in 2013, I think—

And Francis had a speaker, Cardinal Casper, who came and he told everybody that people who are in a state of mortal sin, divorced and remarried should be permitted to go to communion.

And it created quite a stir.

And after that,

Francis sort of gave up on the whole idea of meeting with cardinals again.

He created this organization, the Gang of Nine, we call it, to reinvent the Curia, and they would meet, and Francis would meet with them, and he would meet selectively with cardinals, but he would never have a consistent, until 2022 he had one,

And it was basically, there wasn't much listening to it.

The document they were discussing had already been written, so they didn't really have any input.

Francis was never really about input from the Cardinals.

He was about telling the Cardinals what to do.

He was about control.

And they had resented that, and they hoped that Leo was going to be different, so he convoked this consistory, and it was supposed to be different.

But like you say, I agree with you, it's sort of a trad-inc hope that was not realized.

Yeah, well, I think that this effort is sort of superficial.

You know, Cardinals, our good leader has access to his top people.

Like you've seen today in the Trump administration, there's some good people there, and you rely on good people.

And they represent the entire planet in the church's case.

So he really does need to interact with them.

And all of the Cardinals were hoping for was to be able to get to know each other, like you say, and they didn't get to know each other or have access to Leo.

They really wanted better access to him.